SONET/SDH networks employ automatic protection switching (APS) techniques to protect one or more working channels with a backup protection channel. In response to a circuit, hardware, or network failure, the traffic load carried by the adversely affected channel is automatically switched to the protection channel such that the effect of the failure is minimized. One type of APS network strives to protect a plurality of channels using a single protection channel. This form of APS network is commonly referred to as a 1:N network, where N is an integer greater than one.
APS techniques utilize routes between channel devices (e.g., transmit devices, receive devices, or transceiver devices) located at a network node. One prior art technique employs a mesh architecture in which each channel device in a node is connected to every other channel device in the node, thus facilitating signal routing between any two channel devices. If the node contains N channel devices, the APS mesh requires N−1 interconnecting routes corresponding to each channel device. Consequently, the number of routes associated with each channel device increases as the number of channel devices increases. In this regard, mesh architectures can be undesirably complex, in that the total number of routes is equal to the quantity
                    N        2            -      N        2    ,and the channel device drivers must be designed to drive all of the N−1 routes.